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It looks like that code was never actually MIT licenced but had the licence-file in there by mistake. Then Roman made the repo public after the faulty licence got removed, because he (wrongly) believed the code actually was MIT-licenced before the change.

That's how I read it. Is it true? No idea but it might be.

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If the code is in a repo that has been shared with other people and with a license file saying "All code in this repo is under MIT license", then the code is MIT licensed. You can't come along later and say "I changed my mind" or "I made a mistake". Hard luck, be more careful next time.

The only exception would be if you ask the people whom it was shared with if they're ok with retroactively changing the license.

It's not like anybody except for the core team had had access before.

The MIT license was added by Alexander himself in the initial commit in June 2021. Since then Roman has contributed actively to the code and Viktor started to contribute more recently too.

So there are people who contributed the code under the MIT license, so its not a sole work of Alexander and the license was not added as a mistake.

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